


The Hardest Day

by MalcolmInSpace



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Battle of Britain, F/F, Fighter Pilots, Shapeshifting, Werewolves, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 16:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10030856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalcolmInSpace/pseuds/MalcolmInSpace
Summary: As the Battle of Britain rages on, two women fight for home, for family, and for each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jungle_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/gifts).



_Somewhere over southern England, 29 July, 1943, 0530 hours_

“Good morning!” the deceptively cheerful voice of Red Leader crackles over the radio. “How’s it feel to be flying over hostile territory with nothing between you and the pearly gates but a bit of canvas and lowest bid engineering? Bet you wished you’d studied harder in school.” Her chuckle growls off abruptly. “Hit those throttles.  We’ll be killing people before breakfast. Remember, my lovelies, this is a raid, not a battle.  We go in, stab the Germans inna neck and leave before they can scramble anything bigger than an egg.”

The sun is crawling over the horizon off their ten o’clock, lighting the countryside below with warm orange and pink light.  It disguises the scars and materiel of war and Mulan imagines it as the pastoral landscape she’d seen in paintings.  Then the land disappears behind them and they shoot out over the Channel.  Ahead, wreathed in fog, is France. Enemy territory.

Home.

The ten fighters of Red Squadron hold crisp double echelon formation as they fly.  They are all experienced now, sharpened aces with mastery of their machines.  Not like the first time. Not like those desperate days when the Royal Air Force was teenagers with three hours training being thrown into air against the hardened killers of the Luftwaffe as they brought fire and death to England.  Mulan had seen a newspaper calling it lambs being sent to the wolves.  Lambs who’d grown teeth and claws, lambs who had sent the wolves howling.  And now they were wolves themselves.

Mulan glances reflexively to the machine she knew was Red Leader.  Some, more than others.

 

The first time she’d seen Squadron Leader Ruby Lucas, RAF, had been 15 August, 1940, on the training field of RAF Filton, five weeks into the Battle of Britain.  She and her fellow freshly graduated pilots had taken the train south from Scotland to Bristol, then been driven north to the base by a chatty WAAF with strawberry hair who’d politely but firmly turned aside the flirtatious advances of the male pilots.  They’d pulled through the gates with an ease that surprised Mulan, who’d been bracing for some imagined officer to come and reveal that no, this was not in fact real. Instead, the bored-looking guard had looked over their papers and waved them through.  When Mulan looked back, she saw he had already gone back to his tea.  The realities of an active service base were apparently a little different than the rigid lockstep of flight school.

But then, at flight school the planes that went up usually came back.

The covered truck had deposited them on the edge of the tarmac where they’d been met by a lanky, dark-haired pilot with one arm in a sling and a bitter look in his eyes.  He’d looked through them more than at them, and made no effort to introduce himself or learn their names.  Three of the five Mulan had traveled with were assigned to No. 601 Squadron, while she and one other – a painfully earnest Cornish boy named Simons with a nearly incomprehensible accent who was going to die in two days – were assigned to No. 523 Squadron, callsign RD and informally called Red Squadron.

The pilot walked fast enough that they had to hurry to keep up, burdened by their duffels.  The three for No. 601 Squadron were shown to their barracks, and the they walked on, away from the barracks buildings and towards the steel, half-cylinder hangars.

“Are we not going to the barracks?” Mulan asked, quickening her pace to draw even with the pilot.

The pilot rolled his eyes, sighed, and said, “No.  I am taking you to your squadron leader, and your squadron leader is down on the exercise field, which is all the way across the base.” He stopped talking, and sped up again.

Despite this unwelcoming welcome, Mulan didn’t mind the walk.  The hangar doors were all open and so she could see all the planes. Spitfires, Beaufighters, Blenheims, a few Gladiators and, most of all, the Hawker Hurricanes.  She felt a thrill of excitement and dread as she saw the bold lines of the Hurricanes.  Most of them had the new, improved propeller and all had the menacing black tubes of eight machine guns protruding from the wings.  Mulan loved them.  Slower than the Spitfire and the feared Luftwaffe fighters, the Hurricane could out-maneuver them both, and it was rugged, easy to maintain, and quick to build.  The Spitfire was the darling of the RAF, but Mulan knew that the majority of victories being scored as the Blitz went on were by the Hurricane, and with a turnaround time of less than ten minutes a Hurricane pilot could rearm, refuel, and be back in the fight in a third the time of the Spitfire.  Assuming they came back at all.

As they passed the last hangar, Mulan could hear shouts and noise.  They rounded the corner to see a gaggle of pilots, mechanics, and support staff circled around… a fight?  She glanced over at her escort and saw the look of deep disapproval on his face.  There was a muddy thud and a brief cheer from the crowd, and then they began to disperse.  In the centre of the ring was a mixed group of pilots, all in PT gear, clustered around two others.  From the mud and the rueful expression, Mulan assumed he was the loser of the scuffle, and the other…

Mulan sucked in a breath.  The pilot was tall, long-limbed, and leanly muscled.  She had straight black hair bound up onto her head in tight braids and big green eyes.  The muscles in her shoulders and arms turned woke a heat in Mulan’s belly, and the woman smiled and Mulan knew she was lost.  It was a wide, toothy smile, infectious with laughter and a sly, private amusement.  Then the woman saw Mulan (and the other two, presumably, but Mulan was quite sure the woman was looking only at her) and that smile disappeared. Mostly.

The pilot who’d escorted them coughed significantly, then straightened and saluted. The salute was awkward, unpractised, with his non-dominant arm, but he still projected a stiff stuffiness. Mulan belatedly followed suit, and then the dark-haired woman returned the salute and Mulan thought, _Oh no. She’s my CO._

“Squadron Leader Lucas, your new pilots.”

Lucas held the salute just a moment longer than customary, and Mulan realized with a start she had a twinkle in her eye. When she dropped it, the other pilot brought his arm down so quickly that Mulan suspected holding it had bothering him.  Maybe just because it aggravated his wounded shoulder, but probably because he resented having to salute Lucas.  Mulan’s cool apprehension of him chilled instantly into outright resentment.

“Thank you, _Lef_ tenant Foyle,” Lucas said with a sly lilt to her voice. She saw right through Foyle, apparently. “You’re dismissed.”

Foyle turned on his heel and quick-timed away, his back stiff.

Lucas turned to Mulan and Simon, who were still standing at attention. The other pilots, the remainder of No. 523 squadron, Mulan assumed, gathered a short distance away, watching silently. They were reserved, the easy camaraderie of a moment ago replaced by neutral reserve. They weren’t hostile, just unwilling to open up to these new faces. The bond of those who had shared dangers together. Mulan ached to share in that warrior bond, and terrified of what she would face to gain it.  Lucas stepped close, inspecting them. She smelled of sweat and grass and engine grease and rough soap and Mulan thought her knees would buckle.

Finally, Lucas stepped back and grinned widely. “At ease, pilots. Welcome to Red Squadron. I’m Ruby Lucas, commander of 523 Squadron, but most people call me Red. You’re Simons, right?” Simons nodded eagerly, puppy-eager, and Red smiled indulgently. “And you must be Mulan, right?”

Mulan nodded, and said, “Aye, ma’am. Red.  It’s a pleasure to be here.” She almost stumbled over the nickname. Familiarity with an officer was hard enough. Familiarity with _her_ made Mulan feel like her tongue was in knots.

Red laughed. “I’d forgotten you’re French,” she said, then called over her shoulder to another pilot, a short, Gallic-looking man with stubble and a sullen expression. “Jacques, quelqun d'autre a qui vous pouvez parler!”

The man, Jacques, looked up and grimaced. “Pourquoi vouloir, nous allons probablement tous mourir demain.”

Red laughed and patted Mulan on the shoulder.  “Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’s a good man. He was over here when the invasion happened, but his brothers and father were trapped over there.”

“We have that in common, then,” Mulan said flatly, then kicked herself. She might have a schoolyard crush on this woman, but that didn’t mean she needed to-

“I am so sorry,” Red said with great sincerity, laying a comforting hand on Mulan’s arm. “Are they…”

Mulan shrugged, trying to project stoicism. “I don’t know. We were separated during the evacuation. I made it across just before the tanks rolled in and closed the ports. They’d told me they’d go back south if we couldn’t get out. They have a cabin in the Margeride Mountains, and…” She trailed off, realizing she was rambling.  But Red didn’t seem to mind. She projected warmth, concern. She was just being a good officer, surely. “But I’m sure everyone here has a sad story,” she said, smiling thinly.

Red laughed and put her hands on her hips. “Most of us. Except for me and Susan over there.”

“Too right, Red,” said a brown-haired young woman with grease stains on her face. “My ma and pa are up in the Hebrides where it’s so cold and desolate even Hitler doesn’t want it. I joined up just to get warm!” Her cheerful tone was like a ray of sunshine, even if her accent was so thick Mulan could barely understand her.

Susan was roundly, playfully booed, and Mulan could feel the bonds of love that held these young men and women together. “That’s right,” Red said, “we’re a unit with many flags. Roman over there is Czech, Leo is Polish, Annie is American but we don’t hold it against her.” Annie, who was short and round and blonde, stuck her tongue out at Red, who laughed easily. “And unlike those silver spoon tightwads from No. 601 we don’t put on airs.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “And they’re mostly Yanks by now, anyways, and the ones who are English are like Foyle there and think we’ll believe their nobs just because they’ve got ten-foot poles up their arses.”

“So, uh, you’re not American, then?”

Red affected a look of scalded indignity. “I am not! I’m Canadian. I left my granny’s cottage in the wilderness of British Columbia and tried to sneak into the army.  That didn't work, so I stowed aboard a transport.  I got here just in time for the Elizabeth Decree and, well."  She spread her hands to indicate the airfield, the squadron, the war.

It began to rain, a fine, warm, summer drizzle.  "Come on," Red said, putting her arms around Mulan and Simons both, "let's get in out of this before it gets properly English.  Leo, Roman, get their bags, eh?"

 

"Coming up on the halfway mark," Red says over the radio, her voice crackling with static and with tension.  Below the squadron, the dark, choppy waters of the Channel stretch out in every direction.  The cliffs of south England are a smear on the horizon behind, and France a looming shadow ahead.  The heavy clouds above Normandy are still mostly untouched by the rising sun, just a pinkish blush on the heavy cloud.

"RD Leader, RD Leader this is Coastal Command," comes a female voice over the radio.  "Heavy weather is interfering with long-range radar.  We are unable to monitor the target.  Command advises caution."

Mulan snorts to herself.  That's a kind way to say they'd be even more on their own than usual.  Whatever.  This was a raid, just another part of the RAF's long effort to soften up the Luftwaffe's ability to counter any coming invasion of France. Nobody knew that when the invasion was coming, but everybody knew it was.  The British, Canadian, and American invasion of Sicily was well underway and although news was fragmentary it seemed like the Allies were driving the fascists out and opening the Med.  Mulan had heard people speculating that Montgomery and Patton were going to drive their tanks straight up through Italy to Berlin, but Mulan grew up in the shadow of the mighty ramparts of the Alps.  She knows that the Germans will be much more prepared than the Romans were.  She aches to see France again, to see her family.

 

"Why do you want to do this?" the recruiting officer had asked her, well-intentioned condescension in his estuary accent.  "This is the English air force, and you're from, uh..."

Mulan felt her face harden.  "France," she said levelly, and watched the officer struggle to reconcile that fact with what he'd assumed, looking at her.  "And I thought this was the _British_ air force?  The one the Crown Princess with full support of the Prime Minister has decreed all female British subjects and allied citizens be permitted to serve in?"  Full support was probably pushing it, from the rumours Mulan had heard, but Churchill had signed the Elizabeth Decree into law and was even trumpeting it in his speeches. “I want to do this. For my family.”

The officer looked her long and steady in the eye, and then nodded. He stamped her form, and she was a member of His Majesty’s Royal Air Force.

 

“Why do you want to do this?” Red asked her the night they first slept together. They were lying in bed, Red’s bed in the officers’ barracks, the window cracked open to allow the spring breeze in to cool their sweaty skin. The sheets were tangled around Mulan’s legs and hips as she lay on her side, facing the wall and focusing on slowing her thundering heart and the little tremors that still walked up and down her torso. Red lay on her back beside Mulan, smoking. “Why do you want to do this?” Red asked again, her tone studiously casual, trying to hide a vulnerability that quivered beneath.

Mulan turned her shoulders to look back at Red. The moon had not yet risen and the base was on blackout so the other woman was mostly silhouetted by starlight, pale light illuminating the taut muscles of her belly and the soft curve of her hips. Mulan’s heart began to speed up again. She licked suddenly try lips and started to stammer.

Red saw her looking and laughed and playfully batted Mulan’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “I know why you want _that_.” She wormed down so her head was next to Mulan’s and her side pressed into Mulan’s back. “I mean… _this._ ” She waved one hand in a sweeping gesture.

Mulan frowned. She couldn’t see Red’s expression in the dark, only the glitter of her eyes reflecting the cherry glow of the cigar. “Do you mean the war?  Or… us?”

“Yes,” Red replied, “and yes.”

Mulan drew in a breath. “For my family. They’re still trapped over there.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“No, not yet.” Nor did she expect to. News from inside occupied France was sketchy at best, and she tried not to think too hard about the rumours circulating of the Germans taking people, people they didn’t like. “My parents fought the Germans last time.”

“Really?” Red’s tone was gently curious, not demanding or intrusive. She’d respected Mulan’s resistance to discussing her family even though she was plainly curious how a Chinese girl wound up with a French accent and fighting in the British air force.

“During the Great War, the Chinese government sent thousands of men to France to help with the war effort, including my father.”

“Did your parents meet there?”

Mulan smiled at the memory of the self-satisfied way her mother told this part of the story. “My parents were from the same village. My mother had a crush on my father, so when he was chosen she cut her hair, bound her chest and joined up. One day they were caught in a German offensive and trapped by the artillery and he took a bad wound in his leg. My mother revealed herself to him and informed him they would be getting married if they survived. My father says he felt like he was visited by a war goddess. They and another man named Chen Zhen helped the French soldiers fight out of the encirclement and promptly got married.  Father and Chen Zhen got a medal, and my parents decided to stay in France after the peace, and I was born a couple years later.”

“They didn’t want to go back to China?”

Mulan shrugged. “They’ve never really talked about it. Most of their friends went back, but even before the Japanese invaded China was dangerous. I think they’d had enough of violence and just wanted to live in peace. They settled in Boulogne at first, then moved south later, to Lyon. We used to go to the woods in the Margeride Mountains in the summer. If they’re free, I think they’d head there to wait out the war.”

They lay in silence for a moment.

“I grew up in the woods,” Red said softly. “My granny has a cabin near a town called Smithers, a little railroad stop, really. I was born in Victoria, but I went to live with her after…” She trailed off, shutting down that story. She rolled onto her side, nestling her chin under Mulan’s ear and sliding her arms around Mulan’s waist. “And what about us?”

Mulan, hearing that odd note of vulnerability in Red’s voice, swallowed a joke about sleeping with the boss for a promotion. She watched Red from the corner of her eye, but the other woman was still in shadow. “Because,” Mulan said, the words sounding lame to her even as she said them, “I like you. A lot. And this seems like the time to chase what we want.” In case we die tomorrow, was the unspoken conclusion to that sentence. It was an unspoken truth over everything.

“Is that what this is, then? Just sensation in desperate times?”

Mulan rolled over onto her back and pushed herself up on her elbows. This was uncharacteristic of the usually self-assured Red. “No. I _like_ you.”

“You don’t really know me, though.”

Mulan thought about the way Red made her Hurricane dance, about the tears she shed for the dead when she thought no one was watching, about the way she danced, smiled, kissed. “I know you,” she said, and leaned over to kiss Red.

Red tilted her face up for the kiss, and returned it warmly. Her hands tightened about Mulan’s waist, and her skin felt so warm it sent a shiver down Mulan’s back. After they broke apart, she smiled and stroked Mulan’s cheek. “Have you heard the story of the Beast of Gévaudan?”

Mulan blinked, momentarily thrown by this abrupt change in topic. “Yes, of course. The villagers loved to scare the kids with it. A killer wolf. Wolves are not popular in France.”

“And what do you think about the beast? Was it just a wolf, or something else?”

Mulan shrugged. “Wolves don’t act like that. My parents told me stories from the mountains in China. Whatever the Beast was, it was more than just a rabid animal.”

Red sat up, stood up, groped in the dark for her pants. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.

They climbed a fence at the back of the airfield, easily evading the bored sentries, and soon they were in the woods behind the base.  Mulan stumbled in the dark, but Red seemed to know the way unerringly and they held hands. They reach a small clearing at the top of a low hill, and Red began to strip.

Mulan laughed nervously. “It’s bit cold out for-“

The moon came out and bathed them in pale brilliance.

Mulan could see the fine hairs on Red’s arms and legs and belly standing straight up, her skin pricking with goosebumps.  And then she arched her back and began to change.

When it was over, Mulan sat on the cold ground and held Red’s huge, shaggy head in her lap and stroked he ears. “My,” she whispered, “what big eyes you have.” She leaned down, kissed Red’s nose, and whispered, “You are magnificent.”

 

Mulan’s Hurricane bucks and jolts as the squadron hits the air currents rising off the coast of Normandy. The morning light is swallowed up and down below them she can see the patchwork quilt of the Norman countryside. The cloud cover above them is a low, iron gray ceiling. If there are Luftwaffe in the air this morning, they will be loitering in that ceiling, waiting to pounce down on unsuspecting allied fighters.  If that happens, the pilots in the rear of the formation will be the first to die. Just like Simons.

 

On 18 August, three days after Mulan joined Red Squadron, the Germans threw their largest attack yet across the Channel. For the past week they had been trying to hammer the RAF into submission with waves of heavy bombers escorted by fighter wings. The 18th dawned bright and clear, and the Luftwaffe came to rain death on the airbases of south-east England.

As the true scale of the attack became clear, squadrons from farther and farther out were scrambled until the air south of London was a tangled, smoke-stained snarl of planes and death. The fighting continued into the night.

No. 523 Squadron and others from their base were scrambled to intercept German sorties pushing west of the main area of engagement, and Mulan and Simons, with less than twenty hours of flight time between them, met the enemy.

Simons died and no one noticed until later. Eight German fighters stooped down on them from elevation and Simons was at the rear of the formation. His plane was shredded and dropped out of the sky. Susie was also hit, but radioed a warning before her engine caught fire. The Hurricanes broke apart and turned into tight upward spirals. The Germans were also pulling up, but their heavier planes couldn’t match the manoeuvres of the lighter British fighters.

Afterwards, Mulan had trouble putting the images into any kind of coherent order. Desperate flying, the heavy vibrations of her gun firing, the shuddering of her plane that she would later learn was German fire punching through the body of her plane a foot behind the canopy. The squadron, down two dead and two injured, flew two more sorties that day but aside from fruitlessly chasing after a few German bombers they encountered no more action.

At some point that night, as the moon rose over the horizon, Mulan became aware of herself again. She was sitting on the wing of her plane with a cup of overly sweet soldier’s tea and a blanket over her shoulders and no concrete awareness of the sequence of events that connected this moment with the ones where she was in her plane.

Red found her there and climbed up on the wing beside her. “Good flying today,” she said quietly.  Mulan sipped her tea. “I think you got one.” Mulan looked up and met her gaze. “It was glued to Leo’s tail, but you bounced it. I saw it heading south on fire. No idea if it went down. Still, you’re here. So’s Leo. Good flying.”

Mulan didn’t reply, so they sat together in quiet and watched the stars wheel overhead. They didn’t know it yet, but they had survived what people would later call The Hardest Day. A day in which more planes were flying and being shot down than in any other day in the whole of the Battle of Britain, even at the peak of the fighting a month later.

 

Today Red Squadron is flying Mark IIB Hurricane’s, with twelve guns instead of eight and racks for two bombs each. Faster, more reliable than the Mk I’s they’d flown during those first desperate months, but still vulnerable to the faster German fighters striking from ambush. Which is what is about to happen.

They dropped their bombs on a German airfield, cratering the airstrip and turning the hangars into ruined infernos. The Germans were caught dozing, and the squadron went unscathed by AA fire. They are returning to England, full of good cheer, when the Luftwaffe attacks. The Germans are at the end of a patrol flight and low on fuel, but the sight of an unsuspecting squadron below was too great a temptation to be resisted. The Germans dive out of the cloud cover, guns firing.

The RAF has learned a great deal since those early days, and gone were the close, rigid formations of the early war. The squadron was breaking and peeling away like a flower unfurling before the Germans reach the end of their dive.

Jacques dies, and his body comes to rest on the soil of his homeland.

Mulan pulls out of her dive and splashes a German fighter as it tries desperately to regain the cloud cover.

Red flips her plane inverted and dives down on another German, her guns shredding its wings. The enemy plane comes apart as she hits its fuel tank. Fire belches out, throwing a shard of metal as long as Mulan’s arm through the nose of Red’s plane.  The fuel tank, situated directly beneath the flight console, is breached and ignites.

Mulan watches, frozen in horror, as Red Leader simply falls from the sky, trailing thick, greasy smoke. The world narrows into a pinprick of light.

And then Mulan realizes someone is on the radio, rallying the rest of the squadron into formation as the surviving Germans rabbit at speeds the Hurricane couldn’t match. It was her. Some part of her is animating her limbs and mouth and eyes while inside she sobs and screams and claws to take back that moment.

She gets the squadron back to England. She is promoted to Squadron Leader and commands No. 523 Squadron through the rest of the war with distinction.

She is not alive on the inside.

 

Mulan has never felt more alive. It is winter, 1940, a few weeks before Christmas. Although the Blitz continues, the Battle of Britain is over. The Luftwaffe have been driven back and even now the RAF are planning to take the fight back over continental skies. The training bases in Scotland and Canada swell the ranks of Bomber Command and new planes roll off factory lines daily.

But for now, it is enough for Mulan that she is alive, and well, and in the sky.

She had joined the RAF because it was where she was needed, and because it was where she could go. In the first few weeks and months when her existence had been narrowed down to survival she had not really had a chance to discover flying. The training she’d received had been rushed and anxious, and combat flying was joyless – at least for Mulan. She was a decorated ace, a veteran, a dealer of death in the sky, but she was only now discovering what it meant to _fly_.

It was exhilarating.

Below her, the countryside was blanketed with fresh snow, a soft muffling that soothed the chafed and scarred landscape. It was a bright, clear day with no threatening weather or cover for German fighters to come screaming down from.  There was only Mulan, and the sky.

“Red Leader to Red Six,” Red’s voice crackled over the radio, “Earth to Mulan.” Even through the static, Mulan could hear the smile in Red’s voice.

“I read you, Leader,” she replied.  They were technically on combat patrol, but with the clear weather the necklace of radar stations that adorned the south coast could see far into France and they saw nothing. So they’d been flying lazy loops over their station, like careless seagulls on the morning breeze.

“On me, Six,” Red said, “Let’s go do a flyover of that Junker Jacques splashed last week.”

The two Hurricanes banked in formation, and dropped down until they were passing less than a kilometre above the ground. Mulan saw startled faces of people and farm animals look up as they passed, and children waving at the familiar rondel of the RAF.

They had done flyovers of the crashed Junker already, and a few of the Squadron had actually taken their leave time to go and see it. The German plane had landed mostly intact and they got a thrill from seeing one up close. The real reason they were doing this was because low-altitude flying was fun. They buzzed a platoon of soldiers marching down the road and waggled their wings to the young men. The Victoria Decree still only opened combat service in the RAF to women, but Mulan knew the Princess was working on the Army, too.

The Junker looked like a lumpy mass under its snowy blanket, something soft and unthreatening. They circled the wreck, then peeled back for base.

Mulan looked over to the other plane, and saw Red looking back at her. They waved, and smiled. In the five months since Mulan had joined No. 523 Squadron, they had become closer, almost friends. Her yearning crush had been ground down by the stress of combat and death. She knew those feelings were still there, simmering under the surface, but for now it was enough just to be close.

 

“I’m dead,” Red said flatly, looking at her plane. She wearing grease-stained overalls, and had a bit spot of oil on her cheek that Mulan was having trouble not wiping away. “I’m dead,” Red repeated.

Her plane had been suffering from unresponsive airfoils for the past week, despite the crew chief’s insistence that there was no mechanical problem. So, after hours, she and Mulan had taken her plane apart to find the problem. They’d worked until the sun was coming up and found nothing. Now her plane was partially disassembled and she had to attend an officer’s briefing in a half hour and there was no way to get ready and put the plane back together.

“It’s alright,” Mulan said. “I got this. Go.”

Red looked at her, brow furrowed. “You sure?”

“Yeah, go. No, wait.” Red turned back, concerned, then smiled warmly when Mulan reached up and wiped the oil spot off her check. There was a moment that stretched on. Their faces were close, hands touching. Then Red was gone, jogging away.

Mulan turned back to the plane and sighed. There was nothing _mechanically_ wrong with it, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a problem. She leaned down and picked up a heavy bolt she’d seen earlier. Most people would dismiss the divots around the head of the bolt as tool marks or minor defects in the casting. But they weren’t. They were teeth marks.

Gremlins.

Air crews in the twenties had invented the term to explain all the unexplainable problems that inevitably arose when complex machines like airplanes were in constant, stressful use. Sometimes, though, it was more than that.

Mulan reached into her pocket and pulled out the small stone carving she carried. If anyone had asked about the worn, chipped dragon she would have said it was a lucky charm, a memento of family. And that would have been mostly true. In this case, she needed more than just a touchstone.

After ensuring the hangar doors were securely closed, she cupped the carving in her hands and whispered, “Mushu, I need your help.”

Nothing happened for a moment, and Mulan resisted the urge to shake the carving. Then the stone began to grow warm, and shake, and grow until it was the size of a small cat and then with a pop it changed from stone to flesh. Mushu, a tiny red dragon, stood up on his hind legs and preened his whiskers. He looked at Mulan quizzically, but did not speak. They’d had an… incident during flight training in Scotland and Mulan had made Mushu promise to be silent unless she said otherwise.

Mulan gently lowered the dragon to the floor and pointed at the plane. “Gremlins,” she whispered.

Mushu gave her an annoyed look and stuck his tongue out as though he’d bitten into something unpleasant. She frowned at him, and he rolled his eyes and scampered up onto the plane. Once there, he began to hum, and then the hum became a vibration that made all the scattered tools and machine parts dance gently, and then with an audible _pop_ three gremlins became visible. They were diminutive things with blue skin, long spindly limbs, and oversized heads with oversized mouths. Once of them was chewing on an aileron.

Mulan stared at the gremlins, and they stared at her, and then hell broke loose. One of them tried to run, but Mushu chased it down. The other two charged straight for Mulan, jagged teeth gnashing.  She clobbered the first one with a heavy wrench and it burst, liquefied into sticky goo.  The second one jumped on her head and tried to claw at her eyes.  She pulled it off, biting down a yell as it yanked out some of her hair, and dashed it to the floor where it, too, liquefied.

Mushu sauntered over, looking at her reproachfully. The gremlin goo was caked onto his scales and dripped from his mouth.

“Come on,” Mulan said, “Let’s check the rest of these planes. Then I need to put that one back together.”

Mushu spat goo and mouthed something about preferring even the taste of Huns.

 

On 8 May, 1945, Germany surrenders. Mulan, now a Wing Commander, resigns her commission without comment and walks off the base.

 

They walked off the base in full splendor. The winter snows had gone and spring was in full bloom. The Blitz was spluttering to and end, and the RAD was master of the skies. Soon the push back over the continent would begin, but for now they had leave, and they were going _dancing_. A new pilot, a local boy named Arthur, had informed them of a jazz club on the outskirts of Bristol and promised it would be much more entertaining than the earnest but staid dance halls run by the community associations.

Mulan had been promoted to Flight Lieutenant and was now Red’s second-in-command and, thus, had to wait with half the squadron while Red and the rest took the one available truck into town.

By the time they got there, the party was well under way and club was crowded and smoky. The band was playing without a singer, which was odd, but Mulan was more interested in finding Red.

Red was near the bar, but there was no way Mulan was getting to her as she was in the centre of a jostling ring of pilots and soldiers all vying for her attention or just a place at the bar. Mulan had bartered a suit from Jacques, the only male pilot her height, and made a few alterations. She thought she cut a stylish figure, there was no way Red would notice her from across the crowd. Especially with that tall, squared-jaw American captain the focus of her attention. Mulan felt a stab of jealousy, and walked to the far end of the club to take a breather.

Her path took her near the stage door, and she chanced to hear two voices arguing in Algerian-accented French. The door was ajar, and she could see two men in the uniforms of the band arguing over another who was passed out across a battered sofa.  The singer, apparently. She glanced back over her shoulder at the gaggle around Red, drew in a breath, and did something impulsive.

“You were incredible!” Red said later, as they weaved their way out of the club under the light of the moon.

Mulan had to admit that it had gone rather well.  Her father and mother loved music and they’d spend summer evening listening to a crackling radio or dancing with her mother while her father played for them. Mulan wasn’t sure she was the greatest of singers, but the band and the noise of the club had helped and she’d felt like a hero of legend up there with everyone in the crowd swaying and dancing to the sound of her voice. And then the crowd had parted like the sea as Red had approached the stage, her eyes full of Mulan. Red was a vision in red, sparkly and slinky and breathtaking. And she’d had eyes only for Mulan.

They walked, arms around each other and leaning into each other more than they really needed to. The night air was cool, and Red was wearing Mulan’s jacket. The moon came out from behind the clouds and Red looked up at it for a long time. It was nearly full, Mulan saw. Then Red lifted Mulan’s chin and said, huskily, “Kiss me.” After a time, she said, “Let’s go home.”

 

Mulan goes home.

It’s difficult to find a working vehicle in rural southeastern France, even nearly a year after D-Day and the Liberation, but eventually Mulan gets to Lyon and from there to the village of Auvers. To the west, she can see the rise of Mount Mouchet. She borrows a bicycle and rides south along the road, following the edge of the forest. This region was a hotbed of the Resistance, and burned-out German trucks still lie in mute testament to the fierce fighting that took place as the Resistance delayed German reinforcements moving north after D-Day.

The track she is looking for is small, and it has been a long time since she has been here, but she finds it none the less. She rides up to a small cottage with a neat garden and there is her father, older and greyer and leaning more heavily on his cane but still _alive_ and she is running up the path and they embrace so hard they fall to sitting and her mother comes out of the house and they do not speak. They hold each other, and the tears fall down Mulan’s face like rain.

Later, as the sun sets, they have dinner. They fall easily into conversation. They speak of gardens, and birds, and inconsequential workings of the world. Mulan’s heart feels as though perhaps it might learn to beat again.

Until her mother asks her if she has heard of the Beast of Gévaudan. No, not the old story. The _new_ one.

Mulan’s father scoffs. A scare story the Resistance used to terrify the Germans.

And then there is a knock at the door. Mulan rises, her heart choking her breath away, and opens it.

“My,” Red says with a smile, _that_ smile, “What big medals you have.” She is the same. Later, Mulan will see the knotted, pale scars that cover Red’s shoulder and chest, and she will kiss them gently, but it is _her_.

“You are magnificent,” Mulan whispers into her hair.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Mulan’s father asks Red, indicating the empty place at the table.

“Do you want to stay forever?” Mulan asks.

Red comes in, and closes the door behind her.

A cricket hops by the garden, and stops. It points its antennae at the cottage for a moment, as though listening to the laughter and warmth within. The it hops along. No more good luck is needed here today.


End file.
